Six Degrees

In my Social Theory class, we recently read a book called Six Degrees: The Science of A Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts, which was all about networks, and I kept seeing connections to our class. In fact, I actually wrote a blog post for Social Theory about what we were doing on Project PERIS. The post was prompted by the following quote: “Like ambiguity, an organizational failure can come in many shapes and sizes—people get sick, factories burn down, computer systems crash, and large numbers of employees may have to be laid off. Sometimes disaster comes from the outside and sometimes it is generated internally…Regardless of their origins, however, what all disasters have in common is that they disable a part of what was previously a whole, functioning system….And when critical resources have been lost, the most important asset an organization can possess is easy access to the resources it has left.” Watts wrote this in reference to a potential product disaster that occurred in Toyota plants and how the company minimized the consequences. By using a less centralized more connected network for all their manufacturing, when one plant burned down, multiple plants were quickly able to pick up the slack because they shared so much information. In contrast, no one expected the disaster in New Orleans and no organizations were prepared for the ambiguity of the situation. Furthermore, with a delayed government response, hierarchical organization was not just overburdened but impossible because the government who should be at the highest position was unable to coordinate other specialized response teams. Because responses to disasters are normally so centralized, in the face of a crisis without that leadership, the organization of other services broke down. If New Orleans disaster response was organized like Toyota with a more robustly connected system through all levels of leadership as opposed to a hierarchical system, the consequences could have been much more minor. I think the same lessons can be applied to Somerville. We are creating a more connected system.